psychologywikiaorg-20200213-history
How can I help: If I am an academic or practioner
Academics & Professionals Introduction The Psychology Wiki gives us an extraordinary opportunity to consolidate all the knowledge of our field in one place through the collective endeavour of us all. Once we have undertaken the task of accumulating the knowledge base it will be a matter of routine updating to keep it current. You can help by contributing to the enterprise. It is a matter of each of us taking the professional responsibility to contribute to the growth of this enterprise. If 2000 of us gives 15 minutes a day that is 500 hours work. * If you have an area of particular interest please spend some time reading around the relevant material already available on the site, if there is any. This will give you an idea of the links available. Then map out the area to see if you can improve the structure of the links. Once the structure is in place, fill in the material. * We aim to cover all the major studies in each field, to have them all fully referenced and linked to the Athens databases with as much detail as possible, preferably full text. All books should be linked to the ISBN database if possible. Because this is a professional site links to Amazon etc are discouraged. * Much of the material already on the site has been imported from Wikipedia and was written for the general reader. Our task is to upgrade this content to a high academic standard so feel free to edit and improve the existing articles where you can. * If you have original material of your own this is most welcome. Just cut and paste it. You may have to make some adjustment to the layout, but you will soon get used to it. Do be prepared for your contributions to be edited, and dare we say it, improved. But return to the articles from time to time to see if you can improve them further yourself. * If you have trainees, students or research assistants working with you have them collect all references together and put them up. Teach them to use the system, as they will be the generation to benefit. Once all the material is up it will save a great deal of work for a lot of people, preparing lectures etc. * If your student etc produces quality papers recommend that they use it as a base for improving The Psychology Wiki. * Why not give individual students the brief of developing a wiki article as an academic exercise. Encourage the best to input their efforts. * Why not use the same task as a group exercise in a collaborative workshop. * Think Wiki. It requires a new way of working and thinking and it takes time to get used to it. As psychologists we know that changing old patterns requires time and practice. It requires a more active contributory stance to the material we read. Why not make The Psychology Wiki your home page so it is on your desktop and get in the habit of using it everyday. Edit when you can. Use it to explore topics as they come up in conversation, reading etc.; improve them where you can. * Take a Wiki lunch or coffee break with a group of colleagues and brainstorm an article to see if you can improve it * Get experienced and expert and teach others how to develop their skills. Try and get one person a month to the expert level. Make sure everyone that you come into contact with professionally has mastered the basics. * If you publish you papers in journals elsewhere try and explain in the wiki just how your findings fit into our knowledge structure, this way we keep the database current.